Resources

Here is a compilation of the submissions from different countries including Democratic Republic of Congo, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Bosnia-Herzegovina to the Special Rapporteur for Violence Against Women on online violence against women.

Digital technologies, with their diversity of tools and devices, their opportunities and risks, represent key spaces for feminist, queer, LGBT* and anti-racist political action. Contrary to the decentralisation and democratisation promised by the internet, it is now largely owned by large social media corporations, technology and service companies. In view of the struggles for power and narrative, we anti-racist cyberfeminists and cyberactivists who believe in a free and feminist internet believe in the decolonising of the internet.

This paper explores what online violence against women is; what can be done to stem and ultimately eliminate it; and whose responsibility it is to do so. It does this by building upon the issues identified in two research projects, namely the research on state accountability to eliminate violence against women by the Due Diligence Project (DDP) and the research on corporate and state remedies for dealing with online violence against women by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC).

Are you a feminist, women’s rights, sexual rights or internet rights activist?
<br />
<br />Are you curious about how digital platforms and internet technologies have affected and impacted on how we organise for change? Whether this be new actors, strategies, issues, dynamics, threats, challenges or opportunities?
<br />
<br />Join us in unboxing and re-imagining movement building in the digital age, and to make a feminist internet that is threaded through our collective work for change.

The BPF is collaborating with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the UN University on Computing and Society (UNU-CS) in its important endeavour to research and map projects and initiatives that aim to address different gender digital divides around the world. The objective of this collaborative data-gathering process is to help stakeholders better understand women and girls’ diverse needs in accessing and using the Internet, promoting gender equality, and investigating how ICTs can be leveraged to empower women and girls in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Surveillance powers of the state and corporations are escalating and are hugely assisted by information technology. Under regimes of colonialism and patriarchy, women, minorities and all other subjects have experienced being surveilled, enumerated and categorised. There is a need to now relook at how gender is implicated in surveillance practices in the contemporary. In this resource, Internet Democracy Project introduces a conceptual understanding of gender and surveillance, and 3 cases studies on mobile phones and access, safety apps for women and CCTV camera on women garment workers.

The purpose of this issue paper is to lay out the key legal, institutional and ethical issues concerning technology-mediated Violence against Women (VAW), to raise critical questions for further deliberation and action. This paper draws upon secondary literature in this area, and inputs from Indian feminist scholars and practitioners working in the domains of gender-based violence, women’s rights, digital rights, online violence

The introduction of OTT services that replace regular messaging applications in built into a phone, definitely has an impact on internet use. OTT services have become the main entry point to the Internet for most users in the prepaid mobile environment that characterises most African markets. This comparative country study, based on focus groups conducted in November 2016 in Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and South Africa, sought to develop evidence of why people, use the Internet the way they do, specifically when their data is subsidised. The study is meant to inform policy making and especially discourse around internet rights.

Surveillance has historically functioned as an oppressive tool to control women’s bodies and is closely related to colonial modes of managing populations. Big data, metadata and the technologies used to collect, store and analyse them are by no means neutral, but come with their own exclusions and biases. This paper highlights the gendered and racialised effects of data practices; outlines the overlapping nature of state, commercial and peer surveillance; and maps the challenges and opportunities women and queers encounter on the nexus between data, surveillance, gender and sexuality.

Other sites from APC

About GenderIT.org

The site is meant to be a think tank OF and FOR women's rights, sexual rights and internet rights activists, academics, journalists and advocates. We carry articles, news, podcasts, videos, comics and blogs on internet policy and cultures from a feminist and intersectional perspective, privileging voices and expressions from Africa, Asia, Latin America, Arabic-speaking countries and parts of Eastern Europe.